The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age

Four years ago John Horgan, then a senior staff writer for Scientific American, published in that journal “The Death of Proof”, a piece that claimed that “video proofs” were transforming mathematics. Among other things,“The Death of Proof” suggested that Wiles’s announced resolution of Fermat’s Last Theorem might be a “splendid anachronism”, one of the last great formal proofs. As it turns out, Horgan’s ten-page mathematics-aswe-knew-it-is-over article was merely a finger exercise for a full-scale requiem for science—the book under review here. The bulk of The End of Science consists of a series of interviews, some originally done for Scientific American, linked together by the thesis that science as we know it is coming to an end because it is close to achieving its goal, explaining nature. Horgan credits his agent for turning an amorphous idea into a marketable proposal. The agent is pretty good. The book has been widely publicized, and Horgan has appeared on the high-toned TV and radio talk shows. Short pieces based on The End of Science have appeared in magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. Horgan writes in a sly and entertaining manner, often taking the imagined reader’s side against scientists whom he portrays as blinded by their own success and ambition. There is little serious explanation of scientific ideas in the book. Nonetheless, it must be taken seriously. Writers like Horgan and books like The End of Science influence the public image of science.